Posted on 04/05/2005 2:06:47 PM PDT by Crackingham
U.S. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist said on Tuesday that courts had acted fairly in the Terri Schiavo "right-to-die" case, differing sharply from a vow of retribution by his House of Representatives counterpart, Tom DeLay.
"I believe we have a fair and independent judiciary today," said Frist, now trying to resolve a battle with Democrats over judicial nominations that threatens to tie his chamber into knots. "I respect that."
Frist and DeLay, as the Senate and House majority leaders, had led a charge for emergency legislation calling on the federal courts to review the Schiavo case. President Bush flew back from a Texas vacation to sign the bill into law. But federal courts refused to intervene and let stand a Florida state court order to remove a feeding tube from the brain-damaged woman. Schiavo's husband had said she would not have wanted to live in her condition, but her parents fought against the tube's removal. Schiavo died last week after spending 15 years in what courts had ruled was a persistent vegetative state.
DeLay, a Texas Republican, said afterward: "We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at the Congress and president when given jurisdiction to hear this case anew."
In a written statement, DeLay said: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."
Frist, asked about the furor over the case, told reporters, "I will let members (of Congress) ... speak for themselves."
But the Tennessee Republican said he believed the courts "acted in a fair and independent way."
The Schiavo case was unique, Frist said. "Our bill said, 'let's let the courts take another look,"' he said.
Hardly one issue, it becomes the only issue if your plug is the one being pulled? But that aside I am opposed to open borders, bigger government, judicial tyranny, and higher taxes,(unless congress gets a spine and makes cuts permanent) none of which have been addressed by the Majority party.
Got a plan?
Hell of a term to coin, sink.
Appeasement, historically has not fared well against the evil. Does Neville Chamberlain ring a bell, Deacon?
I smell the stench of "bowing" to the minority here. Frist is NOT a good majority leader. What in the heck do we have to do to get SOMEBODY up there to stand up and do what they were elected to do??? Bring on McConnell or Ronald McDonald.........just get Frist OUT!
If you would rather blame us, than the people responsible, then so be it. We are all the loser in the short term, but doing the same thing over an over again, expecting a different result is textbook insanity.
Great analysis and it's a good part of what is most frustrating about the Schiavo case and those that point to the courts in declaring the fairness of the final outcome.
I hope that, if there is a next time, the proper strategy is employed.
"You punish the GOP, you punish yourself too. Remember that."
It's not a question of "punishing" the GOP.
It is a question of moral values.
I have heard some people squealing about "one-issue Republicans". I am certainly not a "one-issue" pro-lifer.
Belief in the sacredness of life is not "one issue", it is ALL issues.
For starters, it means that people do not have the right to kill other people in the womb. That means no abortions. We all no that pro-lifers are opposed to abortion.
But belief in the sacredness of life also means that you do not deprive a person of food and water at the other end of life either. Ever. Even if they WANT to be. We do not allow suicide in this country. There is a difference between extraordinary measures, such as respirators, and simple hydration and nourishment of the helpless. The one is extraordinary, and no one need accept it. But refusing to give someone food and water is always murder. And refusing to be administered food and water, even if you write it down on a piece of paper somewhere that you do not WANT food and water administered to you, is always suicide, and wrong.
There are many more disturbing things to contemplate about the sacredness of life.
The death penalty, for example. Certainly the death penalty can be just, when some horrible killer perpetrates a wicked crime. Certainly it can prevent a depraved killer from killing again. A person who believes life is sacred does not believe that prisoners (or prison guards') life cease being sacred just because we are mad at them and put them in prison. Being sentenced to prison for theft should not be a potential death sentence as one faces psychotic killers. There is an argument for the execution of heinous killers.
But on the other hand, the man who believes in the sacredness of life confronts the problem of the execution of innocent. There's the rub. It's not that the guilty murderers do not sometimes deserve death, but it is ALWAYS wrong to slay the innocent, deadly, an affront to God. Our justice system is imperfect. We certainly saw that in the Schiavo case, in which an INNOCENT woman was sentenced to be tortured to death by thirst because lawyers and judges were not supple enough in their minds to be able to devise a way past the man-made sand-traps of the law. Some judges do not belief life is sacred. But some probably suffered over their decision, but do not share the same passion for the sacredness of life. If life is sacred, it trumps law. Where the law is so clumsy that it gets out of the way, to preserve life, the law must be made to evolve. Not the other way around. We don't let the law kill and kill and kill until we finally figure a way out of our own bash-trap. Life is sacred because it is made by God. Law is important, but it is made by man. What God makes trumps what law makes. The law must move to protect life. In the case of the death penalty, the problem of the execution of the innocent looms as an inescapable snag. Perhaps a different, much higher set of standards of guilt. Perhaps special courts comprised of forensics experts. Whatever we do, our current system of law and justice is simply not adequate to be trusted to take human lives.
Of course, the belief in the sacredness of life does not end at the border. War is the ultimate issue in which innocent life is taken for a political purpose. As with the death penalty, the killing of the innocent is inevitable. Unlike the death penalty, there are sometimes no options other than to fight defensive wars. But even then, the slaying of the innocent is still wrong. War invariably results in a great portion of sin and death being meted out to the world. It must never be undertaken lightly, or on false pretenses. It is the calculated, systematized killing of men, and when the innocent are killed, it is murder. Sometimes, there is no choice but to fight, but war is always a horror, and the deaths of innocents that it causes are on our heads.
And then there are the facts of nature: famine, pestilence, natural catastrophe...to preserve life in the face of these things requires the expenditure of resources. There are always many demands for resources: technology, infrastructure, education, security, art, investment, entertainment. The man who believes that life is sacred understands that resources have to be devoted first to fill full the mouth of famine and bid the sickness cease across the globe, to the greatest extent possible, before any of those other worthy - but not sacred - causes are funded.
There is no "single issue" here.
In fact, the singular belief in the sacredness of life drives the entirety of the rest of the whole agenda and belief system, from abortion and euthanasia to the death penalty and war to the use of economic resources to sustain the lives and health of every kindred soul on the planet.
Now, within those sacred consideration comes the merely pragmatic: how to implement these things in a particular society. In America, with its democracy and partisan politics, it has been thought useful by those who believe in the sacredness of life to concentrate in one political party and help it, in the - apparently naive - belief that once that party came into power, it would change the law and structures of the country to protect the sanctity of life.
Way, way down in the weeds is the question of any PARTICULAR individual, like Hillary Clinton or George Bush. Certain leaders can be powerful and inspire real change, the departed John Paul II is the epitome of the individual who made a difference for the sanctity of life.
But when it comes to individuals in American politics, the "threat" of Hillary Clinton just does not seem so terribly grave from the perspective of someone who looks at the world through the eyes I just showed you.
What is she going to do?
Redistribute wealth around. Folks who are focused on the primacy of wealth, power, economics, markets and the like find this heady or traumatic, depending on where they stand. It has little to do with the sacredness of life either way.
She supports abortion, while the Republicans putatively oppose it.
But both subordinate themselves to a legal system which has ruled abortion off limits to politics. Hillary Clinton cannot make abortion worse than what it is: infanticide. Republicans could make it go away, but don't, which means that many of them simply do not share the same value system, at all. They are apprehensive about Hillary because their values place different things at the pinnacle, and the sacredness of life is not it.
Given the Republicans' performance over the past two weeks, in light of all of the clear signs that God has given us of the correct path, with the death in suffering of a woman imposed by law, and of a holy man as dependent as she at the end, people who really believe as I do cannot simply hoist a partisan flag over our ship and stick to that.
Henceforth, we must be far more discerning. Life is sacred, and that brings in train with it a whole necessary set of beliefs and policies. Whichever politician, of whichever party, will espouse those deserves my vote. By contrast, I must not vote for anyone who does not espouse a life first belief system. Nor will I vote again for someone who pretends to hold life sacred, but when crunch time comes, demonstrates that he serves a different higher cause: money, power, popularity - anything but life.
My "high horse"?
No sir.
There is no high horse.
It is a matter of simple arithmetic.
I have told you what I require.
That is why I have voted for you, contributed to you, organized and pollwatched and manned phone banks for you.
When you get power, you can do many other things to serve many other constituencies and beliefs, but you MUST do those things and not waver from them.
Otherwise you are not really my friend, you do not share the same beliefs and goals, and I cannot help you anymore.
If this means, from your perspective, that it is MY fault that you get Democrats with all of their social policies and taxes which you find so horrendous and despicable, then I guess you will blame me. And I will be oblivious to it, because I will remain focused on the belief system I have told you about above. If you want my vote, all you have to do is protect life every time. That's it. Do that, and I will move heaven and earth for you if I can. Don't do it, and we have nothing in common to agree upon.
If I don't vote, perhaps it punishes the GOP.
Perhaps the GOP learns a lesson and, next time, hews a pro-life line through the fire, just like the 1992 loss has caused the fearful Republicans to NEVER agree to raise taxes again.
If that is what it takes - defeat and disaster and high taxes and regulations on your businesses inflicted upon you by Democrats - to make you understand that the price of my loyalty and support is full support for life every time, then so be it. Blame me for being unrealistic. Blame me for being in an ivory tower. Blame me and my ilk for everything.
It really would be much easier to just give me what I want, because then you would get what you want.
The problem is, you just don't want to give me what I want. You could. You won't. And you want me to respect your maneuvering room to work on things more important to you, but that I do not care a fig about.
That's the problem.
At any point, your side could stop trying to weasel out of your campaign promises and simply do what you promised to do. Then you would not have to suffer me on my "high horse". Since you think you don't have to fulfill your pledges, you not only do have to suffer me, but then you have to suffer all of those horrible Democrats, and Hillary, whom you dread much more than I. She can't kill the babies any deader. The things she will change will be things that are core to YOU, but that don't sit anywhere on that list of things I laid out as the tree of life issues. Indeed, she will probably curtail the death penalty, which will reduce the execution of the innocent by our capricious and frequently evil judicial system.
That's the way it is.
Indeed. The problem is that statute didn't authorize the court to examine the issues of whether Terri in fact made the statements attributed to her with the intention that she be fatally starved and dehydrated, and whether Terri was, in fact, PVS. The only issue the court was allowed to examine was whether or not Terri's 14th Amendment rights were being infringed. I don't see how that could be examined without considering Judge Greer's actions.
To my mind, the only approach I could see that might have worked would have been to focus on a few erroneous actions by the appeals courts. Most notable of these would have been the appeal's courts acceptance of Judge Greer's failure to appoint an independent surrogate for Terri when he was required to do so. Florida statutes clearly required that such a surrogate be appointed in this case and did not allow a trial court judge to play the role. That an appeals court judge didn't think a surrogate would have added anything to the procedings does not excuse the surrogate's absense. I would have argued that Whittmore should disregard the appeals court's acceptance of this action and regard it as a willful violation of due process by Judge Greer indicating probable bias on his part. As a remedy, I would seek a de novo trial on the facts of the case with a new judge.
How would that be as an approach?
You joined today to post that drivel? Take a hike.
It wasn't a strategy, it was a question of which of two alternatives would be better. As to whether either of them could ever become reality, and if so how, that's another issue.
I would posit that in most races, the politicians don't run terribly far apart on the issues (Obama v. Keyes being an obvious exception, but that race was just plain goofy). In most races, if a candidate runs toward his side, the other candidate will run toward him to fill in the gap. One major effect of this that when Democrats run toward the left, they often end up putting in office a Republican who's further left on the issues than would be any Democrat that could actually win election.
Republicans need to learn what they stand for and actually start standing up for it. "Moderate" positions on many issues are actually the least justifiable. Suppose the Democrats want some new XYZ program, with a cost of $20 billion dollars. Would it better for Republicans to agree to spend $10 billion on the program, or would it be better for them to unsuccessfully try to oppose it, with the effect that it gets $20 billion?
I would argue that the latter course of action is better. If Republicans make clear their 100% opposition to the program from the outset, then when it turns out to be an expensive waste of money they will be able to say that its failure was entirely predictable and the program should be killed. By contrast, if the Republicans agree to spend $10 billion on the program and it fails, they can no longer argue that it was a fundamentally bad idea (since that would mean they knowingly agreed to waste $10b) Worse, the Democrats will be able to claim the program failed because it was underfunded and it should therefore receive $25 billion.
Well said; and I agree.
Is there a Tennessee Freeper that could contact Frist's office and ask for an explanation of this Reuter's article?
Frist is such a pansy a$$ that he makes John Fin Kerry, heck even the Breck Girl, look like a real man.
Huh?? I must have been hearing things when he gave the impassioned speech on Terris behalf on the senate floor.
If this article is correct, I guess he was just teasing. What a kidder!
After this cave Frist has about as much chance of getting the GOP nomination as Ralph Nader does.
Frist isn't leading the Republican party any where-he is less than Lott Lite. If he was this timid in the operating room, it's no wonder he swished...switched! I said Switched!, to politics.
What is it with these Mr. Milquetoste Republicans? Most of them don't have one testical among the lot.
Does Hitlery have dirt on them? Are they just window dressing Republicans? Do they care more about appealing to moderates than having any core principles? Do they not see that the judiciary is an out of control soon to be trainwreck? Are they dancing the minuet, trying not to offend Democrats for some reason - maybe the abovementioned dirt?
What politicians should do is before election (or after, I don't care) write a little pamphlet about all the "bad" things they've done. Then, it's all out there, and they don't have to cower in fear that someone will tell on them. I could care less if someone smoked some wacky weed in their past, or had a divorce. People can and often do change.
But what sickens me is politicians acting as though their main concern is to get along with liberals. Screw Frist, I hope he never runs for higher office. I'll never vote for him after than statement. Some people might think that's too fanatic, but I want someone in charge with guts, someone who isn't a eunuch, too afraid of the status quo to tell the truth and see the truth. I'm sick of politicians who are more interested in the "game" of politics than the raw truth.
Every civilization in the history of the world has come and gone, grown and expanded, then dwindled and dissolved, often violently. Our will be no exception. I'd prefer it stay awhile longer. Pretending that everything is a-okay is a surefire method to hasten its destruction.
Fill Brist must have gotten the wrong script. Don't worry, he'll be saying the opposite tomorrow. For something more Constitutional try looking here... http://www.constitutionparty.com/
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